


Trained Feeling

by exultantStardust (mintsaway)



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Drag Queens, Humanstuck, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Trans Character, Trans Female Character, Trans John, Trans Kanaya, Trans Male Character
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-12-20
Updated: 2015-01-04
Packaged: 2018-03-02 07:46:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,911
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2804921
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mintsaway/pseuds/exultantStardust
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Do you need a place to stay?” You ask before you can lose your nerve, making sure your voice sounds calm and composed. </p><p>“What?” Comes the eloquent reply, and you suck in another deep breath through your nose. </p><p>“Because I’m standing in a bathroom stall at the gay club on Lafayette and 34th wearing five pounds of glitter and sequins, three pairs of false lashes, and shoes worth more money than I’ve spent on food in the last twelve days, all of which I need for my job, so I can’t pay my rent on Sunday, and someone left your number on the wall with the message ‘Needs a place to stay,’ above it, and I really need someone to split the rent with or I’m going to get evicted, and I’ve got no where to go it that happens,” Spills out of your mouth before you can stop it, and you want to slap yourself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

When you get off stage for the night you’ve got a migraine coming on, your bra is digging uncomfortably into your ribs, and you still don’t have nearly enough money to pay your rent at the end of the week. You’ve been working yourself to the bone all month and you still aren’t able to scrape together enough money to pay your damn bills. You’ve been trying to get a roommate for weeks; you just can’t afford to live on your own anymore. All of your friends of course have stable housing already, most of them in college dorms, so you’ve been left to find someone on your own. Unfortunately finding someone comfortable living with a drag queen in the middle of Texas is a lot harder than you thought it would be. 

You sigh as you push through the crowd backstage and into the men’s bathroom, ignoring how terrible the air smells. Once you’ve relieved yourself and put your costume back together enough that you can be seen outside the stall you roll your shoulders back and let your head fall to rest against to grimy stall door, past the point of caring how disgusting it is. 

You are so brutally fucked. You are first in line to get fisted by Satan himself. You might as well walk into your landlord’s office with a giant lizard cock in your ass, you are that fucked. You swear to yourself and bang a clenched fist against the wall of the stall, and nearly jump when you feel something slightly wet against it. You turn your head against the door of the stall, and pull your hand away from the wall. 

Where your hand was there is a hastily scrawled (and slightly smudged thanks to your hand) message reading “Needs a place to stay,” with a phone number beneath it. Your breath catches in your throat, and before you know what you’re doing your phone is ringing out on whatever line is written on the stall. You can feel yourself being overtaken by a desperation you’ve never allowed yourself to feel before, because if this is real it could be your only chance.

One ring.

None of your friends can take you in if you get evicted. 

Two rings.

They’ve either got dorm regulations or no space. 

Three rings.

Your only family is in prison for selling crack. 

Four rings. 

You cannot handle losing your apartment.

Five rings. 

By the time six rings rolls around you’re starting to have second thoughts about calling. What if the message is a joke? What if they laugh and hang up on you? What if they’re some right-wing conservative like your parents were? What if, what if, what if? 

The other line picks up on the seventh ring and you let out a long breath through your nose as a faintly masculine voice laced with sleep says “Hello?”

“Do you need a place to stay?” You ask before you can lose your nerve, making sure your voice sounds calm and composed. 

“What?” Comes the eloquent reply, and you suck in another deep breath through your nose. 

“Because I’m standing in a bathroom stall at the gay club on Lafayette and 34th wearing five pounds of glitter and sequins, three pairs of false lashes, and shoes worth more money than I’ve spent on food in the last twelve days, all of which I need for my job, so I can’t pay my rent on Sunday, and someone left your number on the wall with the message ‘Needs a place to stay,’ above it, and I really need someone to split the rent with or I’m going to get evicted, and I’ve got no where to go it that happens,” Spills out of your mouth before you can stop it, and you want to slap yourself. There’s silence on the line for almost a minute before whomever you’ve called replied. 

“What?” They say again, and you have to bite your tongue to stop yourself from another case of word vomit. 

You don’t know why they don’t just hang up on you, after all you must seem ridiculous, but after another few minutes of awkward exchange you’re set to meet them for coffee to discuss living arrangements. You would’ve gladly done everything over the phone and had them move in the next morning, it doesn’t matter who they are at this point, but they were too worn out from their own job to have a coherent conversation. 

And so, feeling a bit more confident and a lot more secure, you exit the bathroom and make your way, as discreetly as possible, to your shared dressing room to get unmade, and go home to an apartment you’re almost sure you’ll be able to keep.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All of these chapters are gonna be pretty short probably I'm not gonna lie. Hopefully I'll get my shit together enough to write longer chapters, but we'll just have to wait and see.

When you wake up the next morning the sun is already high in the sky, which is not unusual for you. It’s not until you look at the clock and see the actual time (9:43 a.m., not bad for you) that you remember you’re supposed to meet a complete stranger for coffee in just over fifteen minutes. 

A mumbled “Shit,” falls from your lips as you quite literally stumble out of bed, and you nearly run into your designated “Normal Clothes” dresser. You get dressed in record time, and barely have time to slip on your shades and throw some dry shampoo in your hair before you’re out the door, settling for combing your hair with your fingers and using your phone camera as a mirror while you walk to the coffee shop. 

The café you’re going to is a ten minute walk from your apartment, and when you’re about three blocks away you realize you don’t know anything about what your new roommate looks like, or even their name. The only thing you have to go off of is their voice. 

Your worries are capped when you arrive at the shop however, as there are only two people there, one a short girl with black hair busy typing away at a laptop in the corner, the other a tall black man with messy hair and a slightly impatient expression. (You’re late, and you know it.) You immediately recognize him to be the owner of the voice. 

“You the guy who needs a roof over his head?” You ask as you approach, deciding to get right down to business. You want to get back to your apartment as soon as possible so you can take a nap, you’d gotten barely five hours of sleep the previous and you have another demanding show tonight. 

The guy looks you up and down, clearly attempting to mask his skepticism at the arrangement. “Are you the guy who called me at three a.m. last night asking me to move in with him?” He replies. 

You just shrug and hold out your hand. “Name’s Dave Strider,” you tell him. 

For a moment he just stares at your hand, and part of you wonders if you’ve made a mistake. “John Egbert,” he says, “Nice to meet you.” 

It doesn’t take long after that to work out the terms of your agreement, and soon you’re back at the apartment. Mildly put, it’s a mess. The coffee table is covered in bills you have to pay and a dress you have to finish before tonight. Various items clutter what little counter space there is in your tiny kitchen, and the floor everywhere is strewn with clothes and sequins that you will never be able to completely clean up. One of the corners in the small living room is taken up entirely by old video games and a small TV. 

“There’s only enough room for one bed in here,” You explain when you reach the bedroom, and then ask him if that will be a problem. He looks hesitant when he says no, but you suppose it doesn’t make much of a difference. There’s nothing he can do about the lack of space. You tell him which half of the closet he’s aloud to use, and make it clear that he is not to touch anything on the other side. Those are your work clothes, you tell him. 

“I never thought I’d see so much lipstick in one man’s apartment,” John says after he’s finished putting his (admittedly few) possessions away, and you can only shrug. 

“I’d tell you it’s all for work, and it is, but a lot of it is also a competition I have going with one of the other queens who works at the club.” You explain. 

“What kind of competition?” John asks, and it takes you a few moments to figure out the best way to word it. 

“So one night a couple of years ago me and one of the queens from the club got really drunk after a show over at her apartment, and decided it would be a good idea to go through all her makeup. About half way through we got bored and thought we’d count all of it up at the end of the year, to see how far we’d each come in the last year. Somewhere along the way it became a competition to see who had more shit, and it just slowly became this tradition thing over the years. It’s moderated by one of the bar tenders.” 

“Really?” John asks skeptically, and you roll your eyes behind your shades. 

“If you don’t believe me why don’t you come down to the club tonight; we’re both working the show.” He’s a bit hesitant to agree, but you don’t let him think for long. “Yes or no man because I have at least a thousand sequins to hand sew to that dress before my show tonight,” You inform him. You’d do the sequins with a machine but you’ve lost the pearl and sequin foot to your machine, as you have at least half of the parts you’ve bought in the past to make garment making easier. 

“Alright then, I’ll go.”

“Awesome,” You say, settling yourself down on the floor with a string of sequins and a sewing needle. “Tell me when it gets close to six so I can start getting ready,” You instruct him, and you see him nod out of your peripheral as he enters the bedroom. For a second you think to ask him if he has work, then you remember he’d mentioned last night that he has today off.

You finish the dress at around four p.m., and are dead set on taking a nap before you have to get ready for work, until you enter the bedroom to find that John is fast asleep in the bed already. There’s no way you’ll wake up in time if you go to sleep now, not unless he’s conscious to wake you up. You sigh and go back into the living room to pack up the things you’ll need for tonight and play some Pokémon until you have to leave.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're not gonna spend any time in this fic pretending Dave is too cool for Pokémon; it's just not happening.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> How do you end conversations?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is super super shitty I'm sorry I wanted to crank out at least one more chapter before I go back to school. Most of this is dialogue, and I can't pull out anything else right now I'm sorry.

The club is loud and crowded already when you arrive, and you have never been so grateful for the back entrance. The thrum of music flows through you as you lead John through the throngs of people backstage until you reach the dressing room. Even backstage the chatter around you is sickening and nearly unbearable. You hope it doesn’t bother John as much as it’s bothering you tonight.

“Alright dude, front house is through that door over there, get yourself a drink. The show doesn’t start for a while,” You inform him before slipping into the dressing room to get ready.

“You’re late,” You hear someone say to you before you even shut the door.

“A queen is never late, everyone else is simply early,” You quote with a smirk, and you hear the other queen groan before you turn around.

“Get your Princess Diaries shit out of my face and come help me zip this fucker up,” She says, gesturing to the monster of a dress she has to wear for the show with an agitated grumble. You move to help without so much as a second thought. It’s near routine by now.

“You know, you could always choose outfits you can actually put on by yourself,” You suggest as you tug the sticky zipper up. In all the years you’ve been friends you have never known Karkat Vantas, Kat Somers onstage, to take the easy way out of something. Even when he tries the easy way it never works out quite like he hopes.

“And you could always get your vocal chords ripped out by wolves, but I guess neither of us can get what we want,” She responds, and you roll your eyes as you take off your shades and sit down at your mirror.

“Aw don’t be like that Kmart,” You tease, and you can actually hear her growl low in her throat.

“Shut the fuck up and do your makeup you petrified ass dumpling.”

“Now that’s just rude,” You say, mocking offense. Kat snorts.

“Dick shitting plaster ass,” She throws back, and you have to admit, if nothing else her insults are creative.

“Kidney Stone,” You’ve got shitty nicknames lined up for miles; you could do this for hours.

“Dog fucking lizard cock.”

“Busdog.”

“I will shove this shoe so far up your ass you’ll have to have it surgically removed. You’ll be shitting plastic and fake pearls for weeks,” She threatens, holding up the heel she was putting on.

“Whatever you say Kitkat,” You say, and she flips you off before going back to her shoes.

 

You manage to get yourself ready and together before you have to go onstage, right after Kat. She offers you a mumbled “Don’t trip, asshole,” as you pass her by, and you resist the urge to roll your eyes as you step onstage. That’s always been her way of being nice to you.

About a minute into your song you spot John over by the bar, watching intently and looking a bit nervous. You spend a few moments focusing your attention on him specifically in the hopes that he’ll notice and come closer. He doesn’t move.

By the time the show is over, or your parts are anyway, you’ve done four songs, and John has stayed by the bar for every one of them. Instead of going back to your dressing room after your last song like you normally would, you push out into the crowd of people until you find John at the bar. He’s holding a beer and talking to one of the bartenders.

“I see you met Kanaya, that moderator I told you about.” You say as you approach, and the bartender smiles modestly.

“I wouldn’t call myself a moderator,” She says, and you scoff.

“If it weren’t for you Kat would ‘a killed me by now. If that’s not moderation I don’t know what is,” You say, and you can see John’s eyes widen slightly beside you.

“Karkat would not have killed you.”

“Just today he threatened to shove a shoe so far up my ass I’d need it surgically removed,” You say as if it proves your point, and Kanaya waves her hand dismissively.

“You know as well as I do that he’d never act on one of those threats,” She says as if she’s said it a million times before, which she has.

“I thought you said you were friends,” John cuts in, and you suppress a grin.

“Oh we’re friends alright. Grand ol’ buddies, have been for years, will be ‘til death. If we were rich and straight we’d probably end up golf buddies by the time we’re thirty,” You say, face flat and expressionless. Kanaya rolls her eyes.

“Even a straight you couldn’t stand golf,” She says, sharp teeth showing slightly through her small smile.

“That’s why it would be ironic,” You reply without missing a beat.

“I believe the word you were looking for was unbearable,” She supplies with a wider smile, and you roll your eyes.

“Yeah, yeah, whatever you say. Make sure he doesn’t go anywhere while I get unmade. I can’t go losing my new roommate on the first day,” You jab a thumb in John’s direction, and walk off as Kanaya nods.

Back in your dressing room Karkat is too busy removing makeup to talk to you, so for the first time in almost a year you both get unmade in relative silence.

* * *

 

When you get home, John collapses on the bed without even removing his shoes. He’s asleep before his head even hits the pillow, and you remember that he does happen to have to work early tomorrow. You also remember he never told you what kind of job he has. He’s not in college, so it has to be something that doesn’t require a degree, not like that narrows the choices much.

You play around with that thought while you clean up your work closet (you made quite a mess of it while you were looking for your shoes earlier). Halfway through hanging everything back up you hear John start to mutter things.

“Not…” He mumbles, jerking slightly. He makes a noise somewhere between a growl and a whine. “Not a…” He mumbles again. He makes a strangled, almost scared noise somewhere deep in his throat, and rolls over onto his stomach. He falls silent again after that, and despite your best efforts, you’re left to wonder what that could have been about.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I would like to thank tenaflyviper on tumblr for "petrified ass dumpling". It truly made the chapter better.


End file.
